In general, the disclosure is directed to techniques for controlling stack overflow. The techniques described herein utilize a portion of a common cache or memory located outside of the processor core as a stack extension. A processor core monitors a stack within the processor core and transfers the content of the stack to the stack extension outside of the processor core when the processor core stack exceeds a maximum number of entries. When the processor core determines the stack within the processor core falls below a minimum number of entries the processor core transfers at least a portion of the content maintained in the stack extension into the stack within the processor core. The techniques prevent malfunction and crash of threads executing within the processor core by utilizing stack extensions outside of the processor core.
